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Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has launched its 2016 Christmas merchandise range which is only available from Volkswagen’s Van Centre network.

Inspired by the brand’s heritage, the new collection boasts a range of themed items that will appeal to any Volkswagen fan. Prices range from £5 for a T1-shaped Christmas biscuit cutter, to £28 for a genuine Steiff teddy bear, with special Volkswagen chest mark and red satin scarf.

The collection offers fans a variety of choices covering all tastes and budgets, whether it’s a Transporter T1 egg cup holder or distinctive T1 Christmas bauble. Model collectors should look out for the limited edition Zinc Transporter T1 piccolo model. The 1:87 Christmas special comes complete with bespoke gift packaging. The ever-popular campervan moneybox and USB sticks are also available.

For younger fans, the funky campervan tent will provide hours of fun, while looking forward to warmer days there’s the Campervan Cookbook plus a new T1 Bulli picnic blanket.

New for this year is the retro-styled Classic Campervan range of collectables. This includes round storage tins, classic campervan mugs and a set of matching coasters. There’s even a practical travel mug with lid to ensure you stand out with your coffee while out and about.

The professional Volkswagen van owner is also catered for this Christmas with Volkswagen branded business card organisers, a slimline silver pen and iPad covers now available.

The fundamental question about a car (who would buy this, ahead of any other car?) is already answered by the VW California Ocean. This is for people who want to camp in their van. All those existential questions, like “If you want a shower and a cooker and a kettle and a sofa and a bed, why not stay in a building instead?” we just have to park, which will be easier to park than the California. Ours is not to interrogate camping in principle: only in practice.

Especially if you’re eight, but even when you’re 43, the sudden acres of space at the push of buttons blow your mind. The controls are very intuitive, and the showstopper is the roof: make sure the ignition is on, the van is not moving (that bit is crucial), the windows are open, the tap is not running (just because it makes a distracting noise), you are not having a shower, the side door is open (unless you listened to me about the windows) and press the central button. The roof pops open like a clam shell. The top bed is gigantic. A small amount of jigging joins the passenger seats into a bench behind and a second double bed emerges. They are actually not as large as I thought: I thought I could sleep on the bottom with two children. When this didn’t work, it set in train an epic, childhood-defining row over which kid I would choose, which ended with me sulking in the driver’s seat like a dad in a 1960s cartoon strip.

But my God, it is amazing. You could load four adults horizontally into a vehicle that isn’t much more cumbersome than a Zafira. The drive is fine; you’re definitely aware of hoisting about more than an average load, but it has plenty of acceleration. The cornering has that distinctive white-knuckle frisson of a vehicle with high sides and a not particularly large engine, but you’re in a mobile home and should not be bouncing all over the road anyway.

Far, far more delightful than driving the thing is playing with its accessories. Pretty well everything turns into something else: the driver and front passenger’s seats, for instance, swivel 45 degrees, to become seats at a weird angle. We spent a mind-bending amount of time just playing; it was like being an incredibly spoilt womanchild with a doll’s house.

This van is amazing. The only thing I don’t know is whether or not all recreational vehicles are this amazing; if they are, modern life is incredible.

The expansion of Volkswagen’s largest factory uncovered an unexpected surprise late last week.

Construction workers at the automaker’s Wolfsburg headquarters last month found metal fragments in several locations, which fueled speculation that the complex was hiding more unexploded bombs from World War II.

Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg headquarters in Germany (AP Photo)

A subsequent inspection by explosives experts found an undetonated 400-pound American bomb, one of several to be found at the plant in the more than 70 years since Wolfsburg was a major target of Allied bombing campaigns.

Created in collaboration with the German transit company Custom Bus, Moormann’s mobile home was started as a labor of love. The project served as a stylish solution to the designer’s need for comfortable mobile accommodation—something he says hasn’t been found on the market. He and his team began the process by “omitting everything that could possible be omitted” and left the vehicle as inconspicuous as possible from the outside.

Marrying luxury with minimalism, the interior comprises a kitchenette, a foldout futon, and ample storage space for a wardrobe, books, laundry, and more. The ceilings and floors are lined with real oak wood for a cozy appearance, while the cabinetry is made from black nanotech laminate with a silk-matt surface for a velvety and fingerprint-resistant finish. The powder-coated zinc alloy handles have compression latches to ensure the cabinets stay closed and silent during the drive.

The small but impressive kitchenette includes a sink, gas hob with two burners, counter space, and a 65-liter compressor fridge with a freezer. The converted vehicle also includes two folding tables that are stowed magnetically during driving. The sofa bed is upholstered in merino wool and can comfortably sleep two. The Moormann Campus bus is available for purchase from Custom Bus

It happened every time we stopped for gas. Someone would approach, usually someone kind of old. “Great van,” they’d say. “What is it… an ‘80, ‘81?”

“Yep, ‘81.”

“Original interior?”

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Sometimes we’d slide open the heavy side door to let them have a look inside at the tan cabinetry and sensible stow-away compartments. What they’d find wasn’t what you’d call photo-ready. Two carseats, a cardboard box full of cans of chili and bags of noodles, trail mix and Cheerios, our family’s signature Legos-Cheerios melange in most nooks and crannies, copious baby wipes, children’s outerwear draped over the surfaces, plastic shopping bags of fruit and veg hung from the clever little pegs behind the front seats.

This past January, my husband and two young sons and I spent a week road-tripping around New Mexico and West Texas in my father-in-law’s 1981 VW Westfalia, christened “The Fillmore” a few years ago by my older son. (It is named after the van character voiced by George Carlin in the movie Cars, in case you’re wondering.) The trip was extremely fun. But it was also challenging, physically and emotionally—as many endeavors that look adorable on the outside but are taxing on the inside tend to be.

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I learned that people love the sight of a family road tripping in an old van. We got repeated props at every campground and RV park we stayed in. Our trip was also a hit on social media, and not just among my friends. The #vanlife hashtag will introduce you to a world of rad customized vans inhabited by what appear to be mostly fit, beautiful people, many of whom seem to do a lot of yoga and surfing right next to where they park their vans. But #vanlife with a two- and five-year old is not all steaming mugs of Aeropress coffee at dawn, nor is it late afternoon light slanting through the open back door over a freshly cracked novel. Here are a few of the nugs of wisdom acquired on my van trip.

Finding Company

It’s freezing cold at night in the desert, so we stayed in RV parks with electric hookups until we got far enough South to be able to handle the nights without a space-heater. Each time we pulled into an RV park, I felt a bit like Borat put-putting along in a jam-packed Yugo: “Hello everybody! We are here in our van!” Beside a row of gleaming RVs, DirecTV dishes deployed and Venetian blinds angled just so behind the tinted windows, The Fill was so abbreviated. Friendly RV people would come and say hi and admire the van and the kids, and there was always a part of me that wanted to see what would happen if I asked if we could come watch TV in their rig for a bit. You love this van, I’d think, but you wouldn’t want to travel in one.

Food and Beverages

VW campers have little kitchens that are so beautifully functional, but it’s not like cooking at home. It’s still a hot dog situation, or chili from a can. It’s not like you’re in there mashing up garlic for your zesty from-scratch sauce. Granted, there’s plenty you can do between a picnic table and a tiny stovetop, but leave that to the #vanlife people don’t have kids in the #van. Luckily, kids love camping food, so there’s really no trick to this beyond chilling with your high standards.

Booze-wise, you will definitely want some, unless you don’t drink. Don’t bother with beer because it won’t stay cold, and wine is too bulky. We enjoyed a dinnertime marg most nights, and it was a delight. All you need is a little bottle of tequila, a bag of limes, and a squeeze-bottle of honey. Hand-squeeze your limes into an empty, lidded container of some sort, add the other stuff and some water to stretch it out, shake well and serve. No ice needed. Tastes great, but be warned, all that lime squeezing will make you wary of sharing. One evening our kids were playing with a boy from a neighboring RV and his dad was lingering in our zone, making small talk with my husband while I sat cross-legged on the van floor, slaving over those fresh limes. My husband popped his head in, and I asked if he deemed neighbour-dad worthy of a marg himself. He looked over at this friendly dude, who was animatedly telling our kids about the local wildlife, narrowed his eyes and said, “He’s nice, but he’s not that nice.”

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Health and Beauty

Needless to say the entire hygiene situation is one we tried not to think about too hard. It helps that I was raised on a commune whose facilities in those days my mother once likened to “nineteenth-century Poland.” The best possible advice I could give is to not be like us, and wait until all of your children are toilet-trained before taking a van trip. Hand sanitizer is comforting but sometimes I wished it had mildly abrasive qualities, too.

Entertainment

For reasons that, trust me, you definitely do not feel like reading about, our kids don’t have an iPad. We brought a few toys—Lego, markers, little cars—but most of the entertainment came from being outside. We tried not to drive for more than five hours in one day, and organized most days around a hike, so that by evening everyone would be tired out and we’d sleep well. Hiking with little kids is a whole other article, and it can be summed up with the word “chocolate.” My five-year old is a champion who hiked five miles and made me very proud, but he wouldn’t have done it if we hadn’t used chocolate to motivate him through the rough patches. Pack more than you think you’ll need.

We mostly hiked in Big Bend National Park, which is wonderful and huge and forms part of Texas’ border with Mexico. Throughout the trip we saw tons of evidence of the massive cross-border migration of undocumented people, and we were stopped at checkpoints at least 10 times ourselves. We took one hike that was probably ill-advised, along a trail with zero shade that went straight out into the desert for many miles. It occurred to us, as the kids became justifiably hot and whiny, that what we were doing for “pleasure” was a lot like what many migrants endure at enormous personal risk in order to enter the U.S.

There’s a lot of packing and unpacking on a VW van trip, because you have to transform the interior to sleep and eat. For the first couple days, we struggled a lot with these transitional times because the kids would be getting in the way and fucking stuff up, and then they’d get upset when we’d try to boss them around. We figured out that the kids love the whole packing and unpacking ritual if you give them jobs and approach it like a camp counselor. At the risk of sounding like a giant tool, we had some satisfying if nascent “family teamwork” experiences on this trip. My older son loved learning the van’s organizational systems, and helped us remember the checklist of things that we always went through before hitting the road.

Discipline

Ha ha. Discipline is actually sort of a huge deal on a van trip because there’s no getting away from each other. ’On this trip, my two-year old was going through a potent screaming phase. He screamed mostly out of frustration, presumably because he wanted to tell us things and didn’t know how. It was hard for all of us. Every single morning, around 6 a.m., he was the first guy awake. I’d slide him down from the loft bed that he shared with his brother and bring him into bed with my husband and me. It was warm and cozy—primo cuddling conditions. For whatever reason, this situation made him need to scream super loud, for a long time, every single morning, brutally destroying the predawn peace. We could not figure out how to calm him down.

Ultimately, the only thing that worked was threatening to kick him out of the van. Literally. “If you don’t stop screaming, we’re going to put you outside,” my husband said one morning, which caught me a little off guard. It worked. It was cold out there, and definitely still pitch black. I’m not sure if the little guy knew this, but there were probably mountain lions out there. The next morning the threat didn’t work, so my husband reached for the door and started opening it to show he wasn’t kidding (he was, obviously). After that, no more screaming. I’m not trying to tell you how to parent, but I mean, it worked for us.

The Future

Unless you can afford a nanny, traveling with little kids very rarely feels like a vacation. “Making memories,” sure, but those blazing moments occur inside of days that can feel impossibly long. But if you have the time to get into a new rhythm together—say, more than four days—traveling with kids can be transformative, especially if you’re forced away from your habitual coping mechanisms. That’s not bullshit. The Fillmore has its drawbacks, but I believe that the interior of that van is a transformative place, and not just because the seats fold down into a bed. I think that’s why people wanted to come look inside.

Kathryn Jezer-Morton lives in Montreal with her husband and two sons. She’s 33, her kids are 2 and 5, and she’ll be contributing a semi-regular parenting column called Hey Ma here on Jezebel.

THOUSANDS of Volkswagen enthusiasts descended on Stonor Park for the 32nd annual VW Rally on Sunday.

There were trade stands, a Miss VW contest and a boot fair as well as thousands of cars on display, including Beetles, camper vans, classic Golf GTis, Corrados and Sciroccos.

John Daniel, from Burnham, who was part of the committee who organised the first event in 1984 and is now in charge of organising trade stands for the event, said: “The success of the event depends entirely on the weather but we still get a good attendance if it rains.

“There is a mix of people who come along – you have experienced guys with their Beetles and younger guys with their Golfs.”

Mr Danel, who ran a VW memorabilia stand with his wife Phyl on Sunday.

Alan Horwood, from Brighton, and Simon Wharton, from Redditch, both brought their replica “Herbie” Beetles to the event.

Mr Wharton said: “This is one of the best shows because it has been going for donkey’s years.”

Host the Hon William Stonor said: “This the biggest one-day event we have at Stonor. It has been going for so long and I grew up with the event so it’s one I enjoy and look forward to.

“We were absolutely thrilled with how it went. The weather was lovely and everyone was having a good day.

“It means we have had two fantastic weekends with almost 7,000 people visiting over two Sundays, a week after having our antique and vintage fair.

Car enthusiasts made a 2,000-mile pilgrimage to a lonely graveyard to pay homage to a man from Marsden who saved the iconic VW Beetle from the scrapheap, writes Ken Bennett.

They drove from Germany in a collection of classic cars to stand in silence at a small tablet marking the grave of former army major Ivan Hirst who is buried at St Thomas’s church, at Heights, near Delph.

Although the major was born in Saddleworth, he lived in Marsden for the the last 25 years of his life and would have been 100 this year.

At the end of WW2, the REME major was sent to Wolfsburg to examine the bombed remnants of the Volkswagen factory for the British Army.

His objective was to dismantle the entire production line and prepare it to be shipped out as reparations while running a workshop to repair British army vehicles.

And although the Russians and Americans had reached the battered site first they failed to recognise the site’s potential.

Ivan Hirst’s grave

While he was sifting the debris, the bespectacled major miraculously discovered an early Beetle and considered it would make ideal transport for Allied troops and believed it could be a commercial success.

But Britain’s motor manufacturers shunned the early prototypes with an official report famously stating:”It does not reach the fundamental technical requirement of a motor car.

“It is quite unattractive to the average buyer … to build the car commercially would be a completely uneconomic enterprise.”

Ivan Hirst. British Officer and Manager of Volkswagen’s postwar recovery.

However the major and his superior, Colonel Charles Radclyffe, got one of the rare surviving saloons running and persuaded the allied management to re-start production.

By the end of 1945, the factory had rolled out more than 20,000 saloons for the occupying American, British and French forces.

The enterprising major set up a sales and service network and arranged for the vehicles to be exported. The first Beetle, as it became known, went to Holland in 1947.

The man who saved the VW Bettel – former Major Ivan Hirst at his home in Marsden

Having handed over the Volkswagen factory to a new trust run by the new West German federal government, he left Wolfsburg in 1949 and was demobbed two years later.

Jane Braithwaite, cousin once removed, who lives near the graveyard at Heights, said: ”Ivan was a very unassuming man and would have been deeply touched by these VW enthusiasts who came so far to celebrate his incredible belief in the car.

“Some were former VW engineers and they said seeing his resting place was the highlight of their trip. It’s good to know he’s not forgotten.”

“ Ivan would always be seen with an obligatory pipe in his hand and surrounded by history books.

“He enjoyed a peaceful life in Marsden but the death of his wife Marjorie in 1992 was a hard blow and a number of years later, when asked what had been the most important factor in his life, his unhesitating answer was: ‘A very happy marriage.’

Historic VW cars make the pilgrimage to Saddleworth

Jane’s husband Paul, an internationally acclaimed mountaineer, gave a eulogy at the major’s funeral at Marsden Church.

He said:” Ivan’s vision and achievements at the VW Wolfsburg factory in 1945 have rightfully earned him a place in the illustrious history of Volkswagen. “

The major died in 2000 at the age of 84 and the President of VW, the Mayor of Wolfsburg and many other VIPs who came to pay their respects.